An Obama Legacy of Accountability Avoidance: Islam and Race

by Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.)on July 18, 2016

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Barack Obama has promoted two major lies during his presidency.

The first is his absolute refusal to call domestic terrorism by its real name. He labels as “violent extremism” what really is “Islamic extremism” in an effort to hide who should be held accountable for such acts.

The second is his refusal to focus on the real cause of racial tensions currently plaguing the country. While deaths have occurred during the course of white-on-black police arrests, he again chooses to hide who really should be held accountable.

In the aftermath of the June 12 Orlando shooting, Obama said of the killer, Omar Mateen, a Muslim, while “we have no definitive assessment on the motivation, we know he was a person filled with hate.”

The president chose to ignore Mateen’s stated motivation, having declared loyalty to Islamic State in a 911 call made during his killing rampage. Despite the bodies of dozens of victims on the floor of the gay night club Mateen had used as a killing field, Obama refused to make any mention of Islam’s declared hatred for homosexuals and the religion’s mandate all gays be eradicated.

Nothing provides a clearer indicator Obama refuses to hold Islam accountable for its doctrinal hatred towards gays. As a politically correct America has proven much more tolerant of gays over the years, Islam has not.

This is not the first time Obama has refused to hold Islam accountable for the hatred the Koran nurtures towards anything or anyone deemed un-Islamic. He has long been an apologist for the religion. For eight years, Obama’s party line has been, Islam is peaceful so that any violence undertaken in its name cannot, by definition, be representative of that religion.

The real reason for this lack of connectivity between Islam and violence was given by Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. In the aftermath of a Muslim terrorist gunning down unarmed U.S. Marine recruiters in Chatanooga, Tennessee, he announced the Obama policy is not to make such a connection to “build trust” among mainstream Muslims. Accordingly, Johnson stated such acts are to be called violent extremism rather than Islamic terrorism out of respect for the Muslim community-apparently even if it means lying to the American public.

Just a week before the Orlando massacre, the Homeland Security Advisory Council submitted its “Countering Violent Extremism” report to Johnson. Taking a kinder, gentler approach to Islamic extremism, it instructed DHS not to use language “disrespectful” to Muslims such as “jihad,” “sharia,” and “takfir.” It is outrageous the use of such words-freely used by Muslims, both extremists and moderates, which they disrespectfully apply to those not sharing their beliefs-are taboo as far as DHS educating Americans about the threat Islam poses.

The reality of Obama’s open door Muslim immigration policy, which he boasts will fundamentally transform America, will be we find ourselves swimming with sharks as Obama claims they are dolphins. And, every time we suffer a shark bite by a “dolphin,” he will rationalize it could not have been a dolphin as dolphins don’t bite.

How many more shark attacks will occur before we finally accept the truth about Islam, recognizing Obama has been lying to us?

Turning to the race issue, we must recognize a myth that has been promoted by the far left with the inexcusable help of the media.

Sadly, promoting myths has become a pastime for these groups. We experienced it as well in the 1960s and 1970s as the myth of the Vietnam veteran as a war criminal, returning home as a psychotic, who mostly came from poor, ethnic minorities was promoted. None of this was accurate, but the myth prevailed.

Similarly, today, the myth is promoted that more blacks than whites are dying at the hands of police. An analysis of such deaths reveals just the opposite: 49 percent of those killed were white while 30 percent were black. Also evident was the media’s effort to play up cases where blacks were killed while playing down those involving white victims.

Another study, by a Harvard professor, also determined no indication of racial bias in police shootings.

Despite the fact a group like Black Lives Matter hangs it shingle on a myth does not deter Obama from avoiding the inconvenient truth race is not an issue in such killings to the extent we are being led to believe.

This truth was revealed by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. High-profile cases of blacks dying while being arrested by white police clearly instill a fear of police into black youths. Often this is the result of simply not obeying legal police orders. But a reality too is the much greater toll claimed by black-on-black violence:

“So, a black will die 1 percent, or less, at the hands of the police and 99 percent of the hands of a civilian, most often another black. So, if you want to protect black lives, then you’ve got to protect black lives, not just against police, which happens rarely, although with tremendous attention, and [black-on-black violence] which happens every 14 hours in Chicago. Every 14 hours. And we never hear from Black Lives Matter.”

But overlooking the fact it required a white majority to twice elect him president, Obama chooses to blame anti-black racism, even to the extent of ignoring the declared anti-white racism of the Dallas shooter. And while black police chiefs call Black Lives Matter what it is-a radical hate group-Obama defends it.

History will not look kindly upon Obama’s presidency. Hopefully, it will hold him accountable for his failure to hold others-including himself-accountable for a disastrous eight year term in office.

Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.)

Family Security Matters Contributing Editor Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (ret) is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam War, the US invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war. He is the author of "Bare Feet, Iron Will--Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam's Battlefields" and frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues.

Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.